1. Field of the Invention
The invention disclosed broadly relates to methods for providing Internet services and more particularly relates to improvements in mobile device accessing of Internet recommendation services.
2. Background Art
Mobile phones and wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs) are able to access the Internet using I-Mode protocol, mobile IPv6 protocol or the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). WAP-enabled wireless devices can now access Internet applications such as headline news, exchange rates, sports results, stock quotes, weather forecasts, multilingual phrase dictionaries, personal online calendars, online travel and banking services, or download distinctive ringing tones. Broadband wireless networks make it possible for WAP-enabled wireless devices to exchange multimedia messages that combine conventional text with much richer content types, such as photographs, images, voice clips, and video clips. WAP-enabled wireless devices can be used to pay bills online using the wireless device as a virtual wallet. WAP-enabled wireless devices can deliver useful and informative advertising and transaction services from online merchants. WAP-enabled wireless devices now also provide entertainment services, such as interactive adventure games, quizzes, and chess tournaments.
Recommendation systems use information of the activity histories or preferences of numerous users to produce useful recommendations for a single user. Existing recommendation systems use collaborative filtering methods to produce recommendations for an individual user by analyzing the actions and preferences of a group of individuals. As the use of information technology has become widespread in all areas of human life, the concerns of individuals over their privacy have increased. Specifically, most distributed recommendation systems were developed for wireline Internet services, and the privacy concerns will significantly increase as the services are adopted for use by more personal, wireless devices.
What is needed is a distributed recommendation system that provides greater privacy for the user's private data. What is needed is a way to distribute the tasks of a recommendation system between wireless devices and network servers in a way that protects the privacy of end users. What is needed is a way of creating greater privacy for context-sensitive, adaptive, user interfaces for Internet service usage by wireless devices.